Immutability is the industry-standard term for “preserving data in the system so that it is discoverable, and cannot be destroyed or altered."

With Exchange Server 2016, and Exchange Online, Microsoft enables organizations to preserve individual or all mailbox items for discovery natively, keeping those items within the Exchange infrastructure. This approach is called, In-Place hold.

One significant benefit of hold as opposed to separate, read-only storage is that items are preserved within the Exchange infrastructure, preserving more of the information including metadata and making management easier for IT admins. Users benefit because they can manage their mailboxes using the familiar Outlook interfaces. From an IT-perspective, In-Place Hold eliminates the necessity and complexity of maintaining a separate infrastructure and potentially storage for Exchange items.

Exchange gives organizations the flexibility to choose the architecture that can help meet their immutability requirements whether that is on-premises, online, or a hybrid of both, and supports the ability to store archived items in a separate physical location.

In Exchange Online, you can use In-Place Hold or Litigation Hold to accomplish the following goals:

Enable users to be placed on hold and preserve mailbox items immutably

Preserve mailbox items deleted by users or automatic deletion processes such as MRM

Protect mailbox items from tampering, changes by a user, or automatic processes by saving a copy of the original item

Preserve items indefinitely or for a specific duration

Keep holds transparent from the user by not having to suspend MRM

Use In-Place eDiscovery to search mailbox items, including items placed on hold

Additionally, you can use In-Place Hold to:

Search and hold items matching specified criteria

Place a user on multiple In-Place Holds for different cases or investigations

How does Litigation Hold work?

In the normal deleted item workflow, a mailbox item is moved to the Deletions subfolder in the Recoverable Items folder when a user permanently deletes it (Shift + Delete) or deletes it from the Deleted Items folder. A deletion policy (which is a retention tag configured with a Delete retention action) also moves items to the Deletions subfolder when the retention period expires. When a user purges an item in the Recoverable Items folder or when the deleted item retention period expires for an item, it's moved to the Purges subfolder in the Recoverable Items folder and marked for permanent deletion. It will be purged from Exchange the next time the mailbox is processed by the Managed Folder Assistant (MFA).

When a mailbox is placed on Litigation Hold, items in the Purges subfolder are preserved for the hold duration specified by the Litigation Hold. The hold duration is calculated from the original date an item was received or created, and defines how long items in the Purges subfolder are held. When the hold duration expires for an item in the Purges subfolder, the item is marked for permanent deletion and will be purged from Exchange the next time the mailbox is processed by the MFA. If an indefinite hold is placed on a mailbox, items will never be purged from the Purges subfolder.

The following illustration shows the subfolders in the Recoverable Items folders and the hold workflow process.

Contact Interlink today for help in defining your needs, which licensing options would be the best fit, and actually getting the service configured correctly to ensure the right data is being kept and deleted.

Microsoft continues to innovate on the UI for customers to become more productive. They have renamed the Outlook Web App to “Outlook on the web”. Additionally, they have created a new design for the action bar available across the Mail, Calendar, People, and Task areas in Outlook on the web.

They have:

Made the email subject line larger and more prominent

Indented messages in the reading pane for easier reading

Added more prominent buttons in Calendar to make navigation and creating a new meeting request simpler.

Additionally, Outlook on the web adds new features that make things easier to navigate and organize mail within the browser. Let’s take a look at them below.

Pin lets you pin any message in your inbox so that it is highlighted in yellow and kept at the top of your inbox.

Sweep, includes a simple set of actions to manage emails from specific senders. You can manage reoccurring messages (like newsletters, digital coupons, and other email received on a regular basis) as well as choose to keep messages from a specific sender (for a specified number of days, only keep the latest message, or delete all messages from the sender).

Archive lets you quickly move messages out of the inbox to a folder of your choice.

Undo lets you revert unintended actions with a single click.

Preview the message contents in-line with the subject. With Outlook on the web you can also now perform common actions in bulk, and clicking a message now displays the message in the same window — finally no pop-ups or separate windows.

Resize images, add custom borders, apply shadow effects, and rotate images. Now supports a full set of emojis. J

To, Cc, or Bcc lines, now show a list of the most common people and distribution groups you have been emailing, which is refined as you type. As you add recipients, Outlook on the web makes suggestions that you most commonly email.

Calendar in Outlook on the web has gained a five-day weather forecast.

Charms, which are basically icons to help you quickly identify specific types of events (an airplane for an upcoming flight, a knife and fork for a business dinner, a music note for a piano class, and so on) have also been added.

Mobile browsing experience has received user interface and navigational improvements:

Updates to closer resemble the UI look of Outlook apps on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.

Improved navigation for switching between Mail, Calendar and People.

More prominent search command.

Ability to switch between emails without returning to the message list.

Time strip updated to show the full week within the calendar.

Improved UI for creating new events and using the scheduling assistant in Calendar.

The following updates are coming to Office 365 users today, as long as they have a plan that includes Exchange Online and have opted into Microsoft’s First Release program. Everyone else will begin receiving these updates in “the first week of September.”

Interested in the new "Outlook on the web"? Give us a call at (513) 444-2020 or contact us here!

In previous versions of EOP quarantine access was only available at the administrator level. Now individual mail users will be able to access their own quarantine to manage spam via the EAC web interface. Users must have a valid Office 365 user ID and password in order to access the spam quarantine page. For current Exchange online subscribers, users should already be able to access their spam quarantine with their current user ID and password. EOP only subscribers can utilize Directory Synchronization and password sync to automate access for their end users.

Directory-based edge blocking

DBEB allows organizations to reject messages for invalid recipients at the network perimeter. DBEB will block all messages sent to an email address that isn’t present in the Azure Active Directory.

View message traces up to 90 days

Admins can now request message trace information for up to 90 days. Message traces for the past seven days can be viewed immediately.

Remote PowerShell

EOP customers now have the ability to use remote PowerShell to manage Exchange Online Protection settings and use PowerShell scripting to automate a variety of management tasks.

OWA Junk mail reporting

Easily report junk mail back to Microsoft EOP team. Users can report a false negative or positive back to Microsoft by right-clicking within the mail message and selecting ‘mark as junk’ or ‘mark as not junk’. This will help improve the spam filtering capabilities of Exchange Online Protection.

Microsoft has recently added to the Office 365 family – Messaging Encryption. This replaces Exchange Hosted Encryption (EHE) and will be a great for many clients and is included as part of the E3/E4 suites. Below are the key facts and a link to the O365 Technology Blog article outlining the new feature.

Key facts:

Included with O365 E3 and E4 at no cost

$2 per user per month to add to other plans

Rolling out the first quarter of 2014

Receiver does not need to be on the service

Current Exchange Hosted Encryption customers will be automatically upgraded

The default outgoing mail size is 10MB.It can be increased easily to 25MB per mail.Other limits include 500 recipients per message, or 1,500 recipients per 24-hour period, but distribution groups are counted as a single recipient.

Welcome to the Interlink Cloud Blog

All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The owner of this blog makes no representations or warranties regarding the information from our partners or other external sources.